LGBT issues

At Salon, Luke Brinker considers the implications of the midterm elections on the fight for marriage equality.

Sarah Kliff at Vox reports on the five personhood defeats for abortion opponents throughout the country.

Today the Supreme Court hears oral arguments for Yates v. United States. Nina Totenberg of NPRpreviews the case, which considers whether a fisherman violated the anti-shredding provision of an act passed after the Enron scandal when he threw undersized fish from his boat.

At the blog for Southern Poverty Law Center, Booth Gunter interviews a 94 year-old Alabama woman on her reflections on poll taxes, literacy tests, and the new measures to limit voting.

Leslie Griffin writes for Hamilton and Griffin on Rights about the oral argument in DHS v. MacLean, a case that will help define when federal employees are prohibited by law from revealing information that they believe shows a “substantial and specific danger to public safety.”

Zach Carter of the Huffington Post reports on Chuck Schumer’s remark that a loss for the Democrats in the upcoming midterms would result in a Supreme Court unfriendly to the Democrats for decades.

At Hamilton & Griffin on Rights, Marci A. Hamilton and Leslie C. Griffin list their top ten objections to the new Department of Health and Human Services’ proposed regulations that interpret Hobby Lobby.

In the blog for the Brennan Center for Justice, Jessica Eaglin discusses a recent victory for defendants’ Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

Brianne Gorod writes for Balkinization on why the Supreme Court should not hear the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act.

In Salon, Steven Rosenfeld writes about the fight for marriage equality in Kansas and the uphill battle the LGBT movement faces in the state.

In The Washington Post, Robert G. Kaiser celebrates the life of The Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee who presided over the paper during the Watergate scandal and helped to print stories based on the Pentagon papers.

Scott Martelle of the Los Angeles Timesquestions the use of the death penalty in light of the recent release of a wrongfully convicted man after 38 years in prison.

At Constitution Daily, Scott Bomboy considers the lack of politicians as Supreme Court Justices in recent years.

Jeffrey Toobin explores in The New Yorkerthe judicial legacy of President Obama, including his evolving opinion on same-sex marriage.

NPR’sHansi Lo Wang reports on new concerns over voter registration in Georgia where lawyers say thousands of registration applications for minority voters are missing.

In what was clearly the exception, not the rule, a federal judge Tuesday upheld Puerto Rico’s ban on marriage equality. U.S. District Judge Juan Perez-Gimenez, ruled that 40-year-old precedent from the U.S. Supreme Court dictates courts must uphold laws against same-sex marriage. Judge Perez-Gimenez was referring to Baker v. Nelson, a 1972 marriage equality case that the Supreme Court refused to hear.

The Washington Blade reports Perez-Gimenez criticized the wave of marriage equality victories in states across the country.

"Because no right to same-gender marriage emanates from the Constitution, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico should not be compelled to recognize such unions,” Perez-Gimenez writes. “Instead, Puerto Rico, acting through its legislature, remains free to shape its own marriage policy. In a system of limited constitutional self-government such as ours, this is the prudent outcome. The people and their elected representatives should debate the wisdom of redefining marriage. Judges should not.”